Facebook Games Weekly News Wrap-up: May 9 to May 14

Little Cave Hero Looks For Niche Gamers And a Good Laugh With Retro 8-Bit
Style

Atakama Labs’ Little Cave Hero is a city building game that stands
out on Facebook with a retro 8-bit art style and humorous quest text. The game
launched April 14 after a short beta period, which began March 24.

The game blends RPG elements by sending the player’s Little
Cave Hero out into the caves to complete missions.
Tongue-in-cheek, the game informs players that their existing town was destroyed
and that they need to rebuild it. Players can construct farms, quarries and
carpentries, as well as social buildings like a town square. The social element
to gameplay comes from an invite system where players’ friends can populate
farms and assist the king in a number of quests.

Core gameplay comes from exploring caves that are arranged by grids of
squares. Clicking a square clears that portion of the cave, netting the player
experience points and in-game currency at the cost of the player’s energy per
square clicked. Caves also feature monsters and a single treasure chest. The
“trick” is to reach the treasure chest using the least amount of energy. The
treasure chest provides you a score card and rewards you on your performance.
Caves become increasingly complex as players unlock new ones to explore by
completing simple “rescue the princess” or “find the treasure” quests.

Activision Blizzard Announces New Call of Duty Online Game for China

Like clockwork, Activision
Blizzard announced a new Little Cave Hero game. But this
one is going to be very different.

The company said in its earnings release today that it will launch a
Call of Duty online micr0-transaction game for players in
China. That's a big deal since it marks the first move to launch Call of
Duty as a free-to-play game in Asian markets, where users prefer to
play a game for free and pay real money in small amounts for virtual goods. Call
of Duty Black Ops is the best-selling game of all time, the company said
today.

The company said it will create a "best in class digital platform"
surrounding the Call of Duty franchise. A new Call of
Duty game is expected to debut sometime this fall and Activision
Blizzard said it hopes to release more details in the coming weeks. The company
said it will launch an immersive title and that the game so far has exceeded
every internal milestone in its development.

"Today, Call of Duty is part of the cultural landscape,"
said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, in a call with analysts.

Last quarter, the company announced it has created a new Call of
Duty studio called Beachhead, which will create a connected "digital
universe" for online fans. The company will have in-game integration of
Beachhead's platform and bring online experiences and console play together for
the first time. It has been in development for more than two years. Beachhead's
purpose is to create an energized community that can be monetized, Hirshberg
said. Beachhead's efforts will be part of the major release of a Call of Duty
game coming this fall. The plan is to continuously provide content online on a
year-round basis.